engine and drivetrain The Flight of the Turkey -- Part 3

[thehackmechanic]

http://www.bmw2002faq.com/topic/164167-the-flight-of-the-turkey-part-1/

 

http://www.bmw2002faq.com/topic/164300-the-flight-of-the-turkey-part-2/

 

The Hack Mechanic Online               By Rob Siegel                       4-1-2015

 

The Flight of the Turkey

 

Part 3

 

When last we saw The Turkey, it had just been rudely roused from its six year slumber, yanked from the seller’s garage by a ramp truck, and unceremoniously dumped in my driveway. The ramp truck driver reported that the car appeared to have a seized right rear wheel, so it was likely to stay where it was dropped unless I did something to enable motion. Fortunately it wasn’t blocking my garage. It was, however, blocking the Suburban, but a nine foot high mound of snow was also blocking the Suburban, so this was hardly an issue.

 

First, to respond to the numerous e-mails on why I paid $130 for a tow rather than calling AAA… I have used AAA for many things over the years, including hauling home dead cars I’d just bought. The problem is that AAA drivers aren’t supposed to tow uninsured unregistered cars, and you can understand why, from a liability standpoint. Some drivers don’t care, but if there’s no plate on a car, or an obviously expired one, the driver is within his rights to say “sorry” and head off. Sure, you can slap a valid plate on the car, but the last time I did this (when I bought the now-departed ’85 635CSi), I had a particularly persnickety AAA driver who checked the plate, the registration, the inspection sticker, and the car’s VIN against each other, read me the riot act, then left, messing up my well-laid plans. One particularly clever reader noted that on a 2002, the VIN is, among other places, on the easily removable trim piece above the steering column, so I could, in fact, take that piece off my 2002tii and bring it, along with the registration and the license plate, and Bob’s your uncle. Resourceful idea, but the two 2002s were about 30 miles apart, with the tii not even at my house right now, so this would’ve just made extra work for me. Plus, I needed to have The Turkey picked up and delivered in the middle of the day while I was at work, so I wasn’t going to be either at the pick-up site or at my house for the drop-off. It was worth the $130 to me to set the act in motion and know it would be completed correctly without the possibility of a capricious hiccup.

 

So, I now had a dead 2002 in my driveway. Just like old times.

 

As I said last week, despite the vagaries I was about to endure and their attendant time-sucking tendencies, I really did enjoy seeing those round tail lights whenever I got home from work and pulled into the driveway. Although I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the car (and parting it out still continues to be my least desired alternative), from a purely practical standpoint, making it so it could be moved was a worthy first goal. So I looked at the seized right rear wheel. I jacked the car up by the center of the rear subframe, then put jack stands under both subframe ends, and left the floor jack in place in the middle. This seemed like an appropriate belts and suspenders approach for a car whose right subframe attachment point has rusted into oblivion. With the back end up in the air, I tried to rotate the right rear wheel. Yup, locked up, even with the handbrake disengaged. I used a large two-armed puller to yank the brake drum off. With it off, the hub rotated freely, confirming that the seizing was due to interaction of the shoes with the drum, and wasn’t due to, say, the wheel bearing or something in the half axles or differential. The inner surface of the drum was corroded, but not horribly. I looked like I just needed to retract the brake shoes. I removed the shoes, used heat to un-seize the shoe adjusters, backed both of them all the way off, and put the shoes and the drum back on. But when I tried to turn the drum, it was stuck again. It seemed like the pistons in the rear wheel cylinder weren’t retracting—not surprising on a car that’s sat for six years. Since the goal wasn’t to fix the brakes—it was to make it so I could move the car in the driveway—I simply took a screwdriver and popped most of the ancient linings off the brake shoes. This gave the drum the clearance it needed. I put it and the wheel back on. The car could now roll free.

 

But the Grail was getting the car running. When a rusty car has a dead engine, to make the obvious Turkey analogy, stick a fork in it, it’s done. But a rusty running car lets one entertain all sorts of audacious possibilities, from being able to start it and move it easily in and out of the garage, to increasing its sale value (a running, movable car is so much easier to get on and off a rented U-Haul trailer), to—dare I dream?—even being able to show that it is literally drivable. Unsafe, but drivable. Last week, I described my delight at finding that the engine turned free, and did so easily. Still, after not having run in six years, I wanted to ease its transition into the world of combustion, so I began by pulling the spark plugs and squirting some Marvel Mystery Oil into the cylinders. I couldn’t get plug #1 out, or, rather, I didn’t like the way it felt as I began to loosen it. I let discretion be the better part of valor and left #1 in place, but I oiled up the other three cylinders. I then turned the engine over by hand a few times to distribute the oil around the cylinder walls and rings.

 

I recalled that, when I’d first looked at the car, I’d examined the radiator and seen not only that there was no visible antifreeze, but that the bottom of the radiator cap had actually broken off and was sitting inside the radiator tank. I now looked in with a flashlight and could see some of the broken pieces. I pulled several out with long tweezers, but piecing them together, I could tell several pieces were still missing. Sigh. Well, might as well get on with it. I undid the upper and lower hoses and the four 10mm screws holding the radiator to the nose, and pulled the radiator out. I flushed it out with fresh water, and shook it until it disgorged all the rattling pieces. I then put it back in and refilled it with the filtered antifreeze I’d just drained out. Hey, with Prestone at nearly sixteen bucks a gallon, if antifreeze looks green (or blue) and healthy, I’m not above just straining it through cheesecloth and putting it back in, particularly on a car I’m not even sure runs.

 

[insert pic: destroyed radiator cap]

 

Next step was to deal with the fuel system. I unscrewed the top of the Weber carb and pulled it off to see if the float bowl was full of crusty mung. It was surprisingly clean. I wiped it out, pulled the jets out of the bottom, verified they were clear, replaced them, filled the bowl with gas, and buttoned it up. If this wasn’t a rusty almost-a-parts-car, I probably would’ve pulled the fuel level sensor out of the gas tank, shined a flashlight in, and assessed the tank for rust (I was horrified at what my tii’s gas tank was like; the rust was so bad it looked like there was a pot roast in there), but for The Turkey, I opted for simply changing the fuel filter and dumping two gallons of fresh gas into the tank. This wasn’t quite the simple laziness it may sound like. If you turn the level sensor to release its twist-lock into the tank, it’s common to not have it seal correctly when you try to lock it back down, since the old rubber seal is compressed and its location has been disturbed, and it sometimes is a bear to get a new rubber o-ring to squash down and seat properly.

 

I then pulled the almost certainly useless battery out of the car, put it on charge, and called it a day. The odds of a battery that’s been sitting for six years still being good (meaning taking a charge and performing under load) are near zero, but I have an Interacter smart battery charger that I’ve seen revive the dead before.

 

The next day, I checked the battery charger, and, bucking the odds, it came up green, indicating the battery had taken a charge. Now, whether that means it’ll spin an engine is another thing. I put the battery back in the car, went to connect the cables, and was mystified. There were not two, but three (!), and all of them were actually connected to something. The braided negative ground cable made perfect sense; it was connected to both the frame and the engine block. But then there was also a red cable grounded to the transmission bell housing, and a black one connected to the starter solenoid post. And it’s not just that they were the wrong colors; they were the wrong cables for their tasks. The size of the taper of the positive battery terminal is slightly larger than the negative, so a positive cable fits a positive terminal, and a negative fits a negative. So the black one coming off the starter couldn’t be securely affixed to the positive battery terminal. All three couldn’t have been connected to the battery before I took it out. Which ones were connected? Most likely, none of them, since all manner of electrical hell would’ve broken loose. One has many of these “life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get” moments buying cheap broken cars, and this weird little one was right up there.

 

[insert pic: three battery cables]

 

Fortunately, as these moments go, this one was trivial. I removed both the black and red cables, threw the black one away, cleaned both battery posts and cable connectors, then connected the red cable between the starter solenoid and the positive battery post. I touched the negative cable to the battery. No sparking. Good. In addition to the trio of battery cables, the ring terminal (the one with two wires that powers the fuse box and takes the feed from the alternator) that normally connects to the nut and bolt on the positive battery cable was broken off and hanging in space. Rather than immediately connect the broken ring terminal, I thought I’d temporarily leave the rest of the car’s electrical system out of it and test the starter directly. I took a remote starter switch, clipped one end to the “50” terminal on the starter and the other to battery positive, verified the car was in neutral, and pushed the button. The starter engaged and spun the engine easily.

 

This was good.

 

A new ring terminal should be crimped onto the fuse box and alternator wires, but for now, I touched the broken piece of the connector against the positive battery terminal, verified that there was no obvious sparking indicative of a dead short anywhere, trapped the ear of the broken off connector behind the nut on the positive battery terminal, and tightened down the nut. I left the remote starter switch connected, unplugged the thick coil wire that runs from the coil to the center of the distributor, turned the key to ignition, walked around to the right side of the car where the coil is, held the coil wire ¼” from one of the strut studs, and pressed the remote starter switch. A decent spark jumped steadily from the coil wire to ground.

 

Engine spins, check. Gas, check. Now, spark, check. This was very good.

 

I’d wanted to change the oil before attempting to start the car, but what the hell. I reconnected the coil wire to the center of the distributor cap, shot a blast of starting fluid down the throat of the carb, pulled the Weber’s manual choke cable (yes, you read that right), and mashed the remote starter switch.

 

The engine belched once, probably from the Marvel Mystery Oil, then jumped almost instantly to life, idling smoothly without any need to feather the throttle.

 

Holy crap.

 

I quickly shut it off, imagining the six year old oil coursing through the galleys of the unexpectedly running engine.

 

Then, I did one more thing. I disconnected the remote starter switch, re-connected the car’s wiring harness to starter terminal 50, got in the car, and twisted the key. Again, instant engine life. I shut it back off, and, with a Cheshire cat grin on my face, ran down to Autozone to buy oil.

 

So, The Turkey is not dead. To invoke Dylan Thomas, it is, apparently, not ready to go gentle into that good night. (“Rage, rage, against the dying of the right suspension carrier bushing?” No? No.) And the obvious Monty Python references come to mind. It’s not a bleedin’ parrot. It is, instead, clearly the old man on the cart (“I’m getting better!”). I am not going to be the one who looks both ways to see if anyone’s watching, then clubs it to death.

 

But whether she can fly still remains to be seen.— Rob Siegel

 

Got a question for Rob Siegel, the Hack Mechanic? You can find him in the BMW CCA Forums here!

 

Rob’s book Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic is available through Bentley Publishers, Amazon, and Bavarian Autosport—or you can get a personally inscribed copy through Rob’s website: www.robsiegel.com.

Edited March 31, 2015 by thehackmechanic

[chadley]

I love this.  Thanks for being the best hack mechanic who also writes amusing stuff that I am aware of.

[roadhog0]

Sounds remarkably similar to my Tii adventures with the new one

[Mike Self]

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!    IT'S AAAAALLLLLIIIIIIVVVVVEE!!!

 

Now you can't part it out.  After all, you have almost two months to get it ready for Vintage!

 

cheers

mike

[thehackmechanic]

(psst... coming attractions... I've moved it in my driveway...)

[dlhoovler]

Dang, you got the Turkey running before I've been able to resurrect the Orange Car, and it's only been sleeping for two years! My problem is proximity, though. I blew a kiss to it in passing last weekend when I was helping my mom with her basement flooding. Unfortunately, that episode has delayed our family trip there to get the 2002 running and bring it home, so I definitely won't be making Mid-America this year.

 

Love the updates, Rob. Watch that beast have a Korman engine in it or something. Then you can rename it "Wild Turkey."

 

-Dave